of rabbit flowers and angry moons
by an awesome blossom
Summary: Sheik kidnaps Zelda with the help of Pit, who has nothing better to do, and Solid Snake, who has to get away before someone dies -- a story that's really about Sheik but kind of Link and Zelda, too. CH9: We say goodbye, but goodbye is not the end.
1. PROLOGUE

**of rabbit flowers and angry moons: prologue  
**_the beginning in which Sheik recites a prophetic sort of vision that dictates the following story._

* * *

"Like most trite and unoriginal stories," Sheik explained as he gestured grandly to his other half's best friend, "it starts with a vision."

"A prophetic sort of vision dictating the rest of the discourse?" Peach offered, and Sheik scowled at her, unappreciative of the fact that she was _wasting his time with her useless observations_ since he thought it was quite apparent that Zelda never let him have control for long in his current form.

Sheik and Zelda were quite literally like the clichéd "two sides of the same coin" with Zelda as heads and Sheik as tails (he liked to think he had the better ass of the two, so he didn't mind not being "head" in this instance). They had two opposing personalities, thoughts, and desires yet were unfortunately trapped in the same body. Well, it was more like Sheik was trapped in Zelda's body, and the princess regarded him as a parasite of sorts that she reluctantly submitted to from time to time.

Zelda kind of hated Sheik, to tell the truth. Whenever she let him have control over her body – which therefore became _his_ body, but even she didn't know to _what extent_ and Sheik never seemed to let her in on his little secret – she had no recollection of the things that he did. Zelda thought it would be nice if Sheik would be so kind as to leave a note of his activities before returning her own body to her. A nice little _hey, I cooked dinner_ or a _watch out, I punched King Dedede in the face_ or even _jsyk I grew a penis on your body while you were away – but don't worry, it's gone now_ would only be polite.

Though Sheik seemed to be anything but that…

"Shut up and don't interrupt me, woman!" Sheik hissed. "I'm trying to tell you a story, and who knows when Zelda will be back?"

Peach only giggled in response, which pissed him off even more. She always seemed to giggle at him, and he could never figure out why. The Mushroom Kingdom princess even did it when they broke out of confinement during the Subspace incident…

This one time they were at Mr. Game and Watch's birthday party, and Zelda let him have control the entire time since she quite frankly didn't feel like pondering the physics of the two-dimensional man (much less how he could have been _born_). And the only Brawlers there were those who were just trying to be nice and those who didn't know any better. It wasn't like everyone _hated _Mr. Game and Watch or anything… They just, you know, didn't understand him.

Zelda left a nice little message for Sheik via R.O.B. to be especially nice to the paper-thin man and spend some quality time with him, but of course her other self promptly ignored the message and the birthday boy in favor of free food. Sheik couldn't even enjoy his food or his freedom, though, because Peach kept following him around with her incessant _giggling_. He had to duck into the men's restroom several times just to make sure there was nothing on his face (the part that wasn't hidden by the cowl, that is), and he even checked to see if the birthday punch was spiked. _Anything_ to give reason to why in the hell Peach kept giggling.

Unfortunately the punch _wasn't_ spiked, though Sheik did his good duty and quickly rectified the situation – thereby increasing the party's attendance, which eventually degenerated into beer pong and Link's best friend, Ilia, popping in for some fun. Mr. Game and Watch's birthday party grew to be a hell of a lot more interesting after that.

"No seriously, woman, stop giggling and let me talk."

"Okay."

Sheik cleared his throat and carried on. "I stole Zelda's body one night to go out drinking with Wolf and Captain Falcon. After about nine or ten shots coupled with a bit of acid, I was hugging porcelain, and usually at that point I let Zelda have her body back, but for some reason I remained. And staring into the depths of that bowl, I had a vision. I was all alone in a barren field and just _searching_ for something – anything. But there was nothing in that dead field. Then I walked some more and fell down a hole. I fell and fell and fell until I landed gracefully in a bright and vibrant field bustling with rabbit flowers."

Taking the moment to interrupt, Peach asked, "…Rabbit flowers?"

"Yeah, rabbit faces growing up from the ground with long ears for petals."

Peach giggled and motioned for him to continue.

"Anyway, they were very nice rabbit flowers, smiling and chatting at me, but for some reason I knew they were evil. I knew they were trying to rob me of some ancient, ancestral _truth_ that I've been cruelly denied of. My _fate_ and _livelihood_ rested on me finding what I sought…yet all I could find were those damned rabbit flowers. And then I looked up and saw the moon frowning at me. …So what do you think it all means, Peach?"

"I think it means that you really need to stop going out with Wolf. Last time he took you drinking, Zelda woke up naked and surrounded by Mr. Saturns in Smashville. And the time before that she woke up in pain next to Yoshi…"

Scowling, Sheik growled, "No, the vision! What do you think it means?"

Taking a few seconds to think about it, Peach eventually replied, "Well, it's obvious that you're unhappy in your situation with Zelda, but maybe you don't think that the world, while tolerant of you, really _accepts_ you? …And, uh…flowers?"

Sheik threw his hands up in frustration. "That's not what I meant!"

Peach only apologized and shrugged.

"I think," Sheik murmured after a bit of thinking, "that I need to leave the tournament for a little while to search for this _thing_. Maybe I need to find first a field or an angry moon…!"

"You can't leave!" she said quickly. "Really…you _can't_. We're locked into this tournament by the powers that be. Aside from this dormitory-like mansion, we can only access Smashville and the stages. And there's nothing beyond that. We really can't leave this place until the tournament's over. Besides, you'd be…taking Zelda against her will. You can't do that. She's my best friend, and _I won't let you_!"

Sheik growled a little and crossed his arms, but before he could give the princess a snappish retort, Zelda took over.

She liked to interrupt his life at the most inopportune times, Sheik thought. Once, he was on a self-appointed stealth mission to pilfer Fox's blaster so he could shoot Falco in the face and blame it on the vulpine because he was bored and in control. But just as he was in Fox's room _undetected _with Fox still in the room, Zelda regained command of her own body and fell noisily onto a pile of dirty laundry, obviously alerting the other to her presence. That wouldn't have been so bad, and Zelda could easily blame it all on Sheik without consequence, but hidden in that pile of laundry was a collection of photographs Fox had bought from Snake that depicted each of the girls in compromising positions and various states of undress.

According to Fox, a fist of Din's Fire in your face hurts like a bitch, and Samus made good use of her electrical whip that day. While proud of his other self for unintentionally stirring up trouble, Sheik was still pissed at her for paradoxically making him miss all the fun. He got back at her, though, by donating all her clothes while she was "gone" to Wario.

As Samus rather forcibly retrieved her clothes for her because neither Peach's dresses nor the bounty hunter's suits fit her, Zelda was forced to borrow some of Link's (which strangely fit) for the week it took to wash the stench of garlic from her own garments. While rifling through for something to wear one day, though, she found a couple of her best dresses and a corset that she thought she had lost at the beginning of the tournament hidden in Link's wardrobe.

She made a scene in front of everyone, and Sheik was kind of irritated he missed that.


	2. CHAPTER ONE

**of rabbit flowers and angry moons: chapter one  
**_the chapter in which Sheik gains a friend and a mystery may or may not be solved._

* * *

Sheik thought Zelda was kind of a bitch for choosing to transform into him _just _as Wario was about to hit them in the face with that god'awful garlic breath attack.

Peach would say that it was just revenge for all the shit she _claims_ Sheik puts his host body through, but he knew it was really just because she was a bitch. And revenge, what? Sheik swore up and down to anyone who was stupid enough to listen that he only had Zelda's best interests in mind and _never_ screwed her over. But Sheik was also a liar.

Unfortunately, not many people knew that about Sheik – hell, even fewer knew that _Zelda_ was pretty untruthful herself. She always told Pit she really admired his goddess-given clothing, especially his footwear, but in reality she wanted nothing more than to use Bowser as a flamethrower and torch the fashion disaster. But Nayru help anyone who brings up the subject of ugly boots under a dress. That's how Falco woke up one morning with all of his feathers plucked.

Of course, Zelda had an excuse for her passive-aggressive behavior: she grew up forced to please countless politicians who were liars out for their own gain. Only royalty really understood how hard it was to part with how one was raised, which was why Zelda's two closest friends were Peach and Marth. …And why they were the ones that Sheik typically sought out for a chat once in a while (never about anything good, though).

Sheik abused their trust in Zelda countless times in order wreak a little havoc in their lives and to get a passive-aggressive form of revenge (they had more in common than they liked) for being _just_ a parasite personality. Peach usually saw through the faux-ninja's many attempts at shit-stirring, but it was the Altean prince who was hilariously (well, to Sheik anyway) gullible at times.

Back when Roy was still in the game, Sheik managed to convince Marth that the redhead was madly in love with him and was conspiring with Ganondorf to kill Zelda because she was in the way of their true love. Sheik thought Roy was a pretty cool guy, even if he was a friend to Marth at the time, so it was kind of a shame when the whole plot eventually led to Roy leaving the tournament after Marth confronted him over the imaginary transgressions. It also probably didn't help that Sheik told Roy the same story with the prince being in love with him and plotting with Ganondorf to kill Zelda. And he was quite certain that the fact that both Marth and Roy were absolutely enraptured and infatuated with Zelda didn't positively contribute to the situation…

But it was why Sheik was kind of counting on Marth to try to save them from Wario's attack, or at the very least distract the grotesque slob while Sheik got his bearings together and was able to assess the match so far. That was always the worst thing about transforming mid-battle: the disorientation that followed. Oh sure, it was just for a few seconds, but both he and Zelda could easily be KO'd within that time.

…And that's exactly what happened.

"Goddesses damn it!" Sheik swore as soon as he was automatically transported (he didn't pretend to understand how the tournament's physics worked) to the men's locker room to wait out the remainder of the match.

Already there was one of the newcomers, Pit, contentedly watching the game on a screen. "Oh hey, Sheik," he greeted amicably as always. "I didn't expect to see _you _here."

"Zelda transformed just before Wario KO'd us…"

Nodding with his eyes stuck on the game, Pit elaborated, "Well _yeah_, but I thought that you would go to the women's locker room instead…"

Sheik shrugged, not really having an explanation, and Pit shrugged in response; and so they were done. It didn't seem like much, but immediately afterwards, Sheik got the overwhelming sensation that Pit was a pretty cool guy, just as Roy had been. And as he actually _missed_ the ex-Smasher, Sheik made an unspoken promise to himself to _not_ try to screw things up where the angel was concerned.

So that's totally why he proposed: "You know, I can't take it in this joint anymore. I need to break out and be my own person, but Peach says it's impossible to leave the tournament without the permission of the higher-ups – and once you do that, it's permanent. They wouldn't let _me_ leave, though, because of Zelda, but I'm not looking to leave for good anyway, you see? Just a little while. You can help, can't you?"

Again, Pit shrugged. "Sure, got nothing better to do. But how do you think _I _can help you? Doesn't Peach know the most about things around here? If she says it's impossible, don't you think it is?"

Making a face, Sheik growled to himself because Pit had a point. If _Peach _of all people said that something was impossible, then it must be. After all, this was the woman who thought she could persuade Captain Falcon to use his _inside voice_; insisted upon schooling Olimar's pikmin so they could break off from their native origins and grow up into successful, well-educated members of society (and thought she could reform Snake, victim only because of his age, into becoming a moral mentor for the pikmin); and staged an intervention between Falco, Fox, and Wolf to see if they couldn't work out their rivalry and become loving, best friends. If she didn't think that Sheik could break out of the system and find the land of rabbit flowers and angry moons, then it must have been impossible.

Pit seemed to sense Sheik's perturbation and brightly added, "I'll help you anyway, though! After all, I do have the great Goddess Palutena on my side, so surely we can accomplish _something_."

Sheik nodded, and for the first time in a long time he felt satisfied and optimistic. The feeling was even better than that time when he stole Snake's codec and had a nice, long conversation with that dorky support member of his about how cool it would be if everyone used large, flying buses made of a multitude of squirming cats (Otacon blithered on afterwards about some anime he had seen that had one, but Sheik had no idea what the hell he was talking about) for transportation; and some people would have dog buses; and bird buses; and of course they both agreed that Snake would have a snake bus. And whenever the different animal buses passed each other, they would meow, bark, tweet, hiss, etc.

They both tried to explain to Snake exactly how cool animal buses would be, but they didn't get very far. After briefly expressing interest in the dog bus, he kicked Sheik out of his room, and that was the last talk of cool animal buses. Sheik tried to bring up the subject with Link once, but that only resulted in the Hylian getting irritated and launching into an angry rant about animal rights and how Sheik just_ didn't understand_.

He understood all right, though. If that crazy twilight blanket had transformed Link into a wolf _bus_ on his last adventure, then he would have agreed that animal buses were awesome.

For some reason Sheik thought that Pit would understand, and he suggested that they go for something to eat so they could talk about how to sneak from the tournament.

"What about the end of the match?"

Sheik waved a dismissive hand. "But you already know that Marth will lose because he's a priss who won't be able to handle Wario's disgusting attacks."

"Well, I don't think that –" Pit began, but then he was interrupted by the surprisingly loud grumbling of his own stomach that seemed to echo embarrassingly throughout the locker room. He looked down at it in part shock, part amazement. "…Okay yeah, let's go."

They left, Sheik pretending he was frolicking into the sunset in his field of rabbit flowers and an angry moon already, and Pit talked about his Goddess Palutena along the way.

"…She seriously turned you from child to adult after the end of your first adventure just so She could have Her way with you and not feel like a pedophile?"

Pit turned red and immediately denied the whole thing. "_No_! She turned me into an adult _as a reward_ for completing my trials for Her! And no, She didn't 'have Her way' with me, either!"

Looking rather thoughtful about this, Sheik offered, "Maybe She was turned off because you weren't a kid anymore?"

At that point, Pit stopped and fluttered his wings angrily. "You know, I really don't appreciate this kind of talk about my Goddess, even if She is a little kinky!"

"…What, She's really…"

"Shut up! Listen, just because She turned me into a stupid little teenager for the tournament since She recently became a fan of boy bands is no reason to –"

"Which ones?" Sheik interrupted.

Pit scratched his head and tried to remember. "Oh, uh, we have these groups in Angel Land like Alley Boys, NGELs, uh, 309 kelvin… Crappy rip-offs of crappy bands on another world."

Sheik made a face. "Your Goddess doesn't have very good taste in music, does She?"

"…No."

"You know, K.K. Slider plays in Smashville every Saturday night; he's supposedly pretty good because everyone seems to like him. Not that, you know, Zelda has ever let me gone to see him, but we should go sometime."

"Sure. But I thought you wanted to leave the tournament?"

"Oh yeah, that's right…"

There was apparently an eavesdropper to their conversation: "You're leaving?" someone asked.

Pit looked around in confusion. "Wait, where'd that come from?"

A frustrated noise came from an oddly placed cardboard box that was immediately cast off to reveal another newcomer, Solid Snake. "You're leaving?" he asked again.

"Trying to," Sheik clarified. "I need to get away for a little while, but Peach says it's impossible to do without permanently being out of the tournament – which the higher-ups would never let me do anyway."

Snake nodded with a sigh. "The princess is right, and I've checked this place through and through; it doesn't even look like there's a way to escape."

Pit made a small noise before he asked, "Are you trying to leave, too, Snake?"

"Yeah, and I'd opt to leave for good, but my superiors have big bucks riding on my inclusion in this thing. If I left, they'd kill me," Snake explained. "But if I don't get away, I just don't know what I'll do."

"Aw, come on," Pit responded cheerily, "this place isn't _that_ bad! The people here are…mostly pretty nice, and the food's good."

Snorting, Snake crossed his arms and said with growing resentment, "Yeah, but is _Wario_ your roommate? _No_? Then shut the hell up. He's a putrid and uncouth son of a bitch, although I can't claim to be a civilized man myself, and while I managed to curb some of his most _disgusting_ habits through intimidation and death threats, he just _lost_ the match to _Marth_; so tonight he'll try as _usual_ to drown his _sorrow_ in _garlic beer_, and_ if my morning coffee is __**tainted**__ by his __**stench**__ one more time, __**I will fucking slit his throat**__._"

Pit glanced uneasily at Sheik, hoping for some kind of comfort from the usually taciturn fighter's disturbing outburst, but instead Sheik piped: "Go for it, man."

"No,_ don't!_" Pit exclaimed, horrified. "Look…look, let's all have a nice happy dinner together, and afterwards I can see if Palutena can get you guys on a much-needed vacation – or at the very least pull some strings to get Snake a new roommate."

Sheik frowned. "What, you don't want to get out, too?" Gone were his brief fantasies of being in the rabbit flower field with Pit with the angel shielding the angry moon from him with his wings…

"Well, uh, no?" Pit answered, looking even more uncomfortable under Sheik's disappointed gaze. "I mean, it would be great to go back home and see my Goddess and friends again, but I kind of like it here? Besides, I'm kind of putting myself on the line by trying to help you guys. I mean, I'll get in trouble if anyone finds out about this, but the trouble you two will be in is _huge_. You _know_ the higher-ups will just make an example of you two, and I'm not desperate enough to risk being a part of that."

Scowling, the ex-soldier growled, "_Oh grow a pair_."

"Of what?" Pit asked in genuine confusion.

Snake stared back steadily, a bit concerned. "…Balls."

Lost in introspection, Sheik murmured, "I wonder if I have those…"

"_What?!_" Snake asked brusquely. "How can you _not_ know that?"

It was a little weird to believe, but Sheik didn't actually know his own gender. Sure, everyone, including Zelda, _called_ him a guy simply because he was a male alter ego, but neither he nor Zelda actually _knew_. Disconcerting, yes, and Sheik knew he _had_ to have glanced at his own body underneath the suit, but his memory of the result was surprisingly vacant. _Alarmingly_ vacant, actually…

"You know," Sheik began with more resolution, "I honestly don't know what gender I am."

"Huh," Snake murmured. "I always did wonder to what extent you two shared the same body…"

Pit, though, immediately raised an eyebrow and found the idea hard to consider. "Seriously? I know you're Zelda's other half, but how can you not know that about yourself? Haven't you _looked_?"

"Well _yeah_," Sheik defended, "but I really don't remember what I saw. It's weird. I don't even know if I have the chest of a man or just a small woman…"

Snake put on his 'I'm-A-Serious-Man-On-A-Serious-Mission' face and ordered, "Well, Sheik, there's only one way to find out: _take off your pants_."

"…_What?!_"

"Take off your pants!" Snake reiterated. "We're settling this age-old question right, so drop 'em."

Pit flushed as Sheik shrugged and began to strip off the bottom half of his bodysuit. "Ah, I don't want to look!" he moaned as he shielded his eyes with his hand (…though peeked out curiously from between his fingers).

"Alright," the faux-ninja said as a nervous preamble once he was down to his underwear (which was surprisingly unrevealing of his true gender). "Here it goes…"

Everyone in the room knew what a big moment this was to settle one of the biggest mysteries of the tournament, one that kept more than a few fighters awake at night on occasion. It was like watching one of the most incredible moments of mankind unveil itself, which should have said a lot considering how Sheik, Pit, and Snake had all been an important part of their own worlds' history.

Hesitantly the underwear went down.

And the world went black.


	3. CHAPTER TWO

**of rabbit flowers and angry moons: chapter two  
**_the chapter in which Otacon knows stuff, and Snake is old._

* * *

Sheik considered his life, what little there was of it, to be pretty good. After all, where else would he be able to wreak havoc upon unsuspecting innocents and then be able to hide away into a blameless princess and get off scot-free? The Smash Brothers tournament, that's where. Really, for as much as he bitched and moaned about Zelda and Toon Link's creepy eyes, he considered the dormitory-like mansion where they all strangely resided for the duration of the competition to be his _home_, a _place where he belonged_.

So he shouldn't have been too surprised when a wave of homesickness and apprehension washed over him the minute he opened his eyes and realized that he wasn't on the Smash Estates anymore.

"What the hell was that?" Snake murmured beside him. Oh good, a familiar (though not familiar enough) face.

Then Pit stirred, and so did Sheik's blood flow. "Let's…never do that again."

"So, uh, what exactly happened there anyway? I know we were trying to figure out my gender, I stripped, and then…I can't remember what we saw or what happened."

Pit's eyes grew wide. "Whoa, I can't remember what you were, either. _Weird._ …Do you think we just weren't _meant_ to know?"

Sheik shrugged and looked around. "I guess. But really now, where are we?"

Naturally, the angel's eyes went skyward, something both Sheik and Snake seemed to miss, and he pointed up. "Whoa, look at that crazy thing. Looks like it's gonna eat up the world, right?"

He had nothing better to do, so Sheik followed Pit's lead and looked up (though he had grown to loathe looking up after Ness and Toon Link dropped water balloons on Peach, Marth, and him several times). And hanging in the sky, just short of a noose and tears, he saw:

_An angry moon._

_**About to eat shit up.**_

Under normal circumstances, Sheik would have gotten into a battle stance he picked up from watching particularly aggressive martial arts videos that one day after Ganondorf suggested that he was a useless "disguise" and then proceeded to show him the figures and numbers that really did back up the fact that he was kind of useless at the time (the first thing he did after learning how to beat people up – practicing on the Ice Climbers, of course – was knee Ganondorf in the crotch. Unfortunately, Ganondorf was an intelligent man and wore a cup wherever he went, so the damage wasn't so severe, but it was still a defining moment for Sheik and Zelda), but the moon didn't appear to be dangerous at the moment.

Just…pissed and hungry. And kind of fat. But he supposed the two went hand in hand.

"_Otacon! Do you read me, Otacon! … … Listen, I don't care that you just bought _Katamari Damacy_, this is important! … Really? That sounds absolutely retarded. … Okay, I'm sorry, it does sound kind of awesome, but dammit, this is important! I seem to be in a strange place with Sheik and Pit. Can you help? … What! No, that was not a euphemism!_"

In a panic, Sheik looked to Pit, but the angel boy didn't seem to be too perturbed by the fact that Snake was basically _hallucinating that he was talking to Otacon extensively_ and really, was he the only one to realize that Snake had completely snapped and gone crazy? He had to do _something_ before the ex-soldier stopped talking to himself and decided to do something dangerous to them. So he grabbed a rock.

"_Hal, I'm telling you, I don't have a problem! I know at least one of those kinds of guys, and I don't have a problem with that kind of thing, so get off my case! … No, I am not being defensive! If anything, I think _you're_ the one being defensive!_"

"I don't think that's a good idea," Pit said nervously just as Sheik was about to hurl the rock at the arguing man.

Sheik only shrugged and aimed.

Pit's eyes widened a bit as he stepped back from the scene that was about to unfold. He really didn't mean to get involved in crazy ninjas, strange lands, and angry mercenaries when he woke up that morning. He never said to himself, _why self, I think I'll use that creepy ninja dude's penis or lack thereof to travel to a distant land!_ No, in fact, what Pit said to himself that morning was: _Soda. Now. _(He wasn't a coffee drinker, after all, and couldn't understand those who partook in that bitter, vile liquid; he much preferred carbonated sweetness).

"_Alright, alright, I'm sorry about all those cracks about your effeminacy – … Sorry, lack of manhood – … Okay, your _lack of being like me_ and wanting to bang your sister before she died – … No, no, I meant _me_ not you! … Listen, I was going to clear it with you first, Hal. … You know, it really doesn't matter anymore, and since I've got these people waiting we should really get back to – …_"

**Thok!**

"Jesus Christ, what the –" Snake growled as he tore himself from his argument over the codec and whirled around to face his assailant, hand reaching for a gun or any kind of weapon. …Except he was absolutely disarmed save for a pack of smokes he always kept on him. He began to curse himself for not having at least _something_ just in case a situation like this would arrive…

But really, Snake shouldn't have placed the blame on himself. There was a strict policy against weapons of any kind outside stages and the training room in addition to parameters similar to those during matches kept constantly in place inside the mansion to prevent death or serious injury. Caught rule breakers were subjected to strange and cruel treatment that Snake was quite sure violated the Geneva Convention, though the punishments were hardly anything any one of the Smashers couldn't handle. And sometimes the pain was just worth it. The only person who seemed to be an exception to this policy was Zelda because it wasn't exactly her fault what Sheik did while in control. Regardless, if Snake was caught weaponless (though that was hardly an issue since he was frequently sent on solo missions naked – just meant he'd have to break Sheik's neck later rather than shoot him in the face now), then it meant that so were the asshole and angel boy. And so if they managed to get themselves into any trouble, which they undoubtedly would, he'd be the only one who could do anything thanks to his extensive close-quarters-combat training. He considered them their only hope since he didn't trust that "ninja", if he could even call him that, with anything relevant. The knowledge was a disconcerting burden.

"The hell's wrong with you, He-She?" he barked.

"He-She? _He-She_?" Sheik scowled. "We don't know! That's what got us into this mess! And stop being crazy and talking to yourself, or we'll eat you first if we can't find suitable food in this place."

Pit paled while Snake only chuckled, "I'd like to see you attempt that. And since you can't figure it out on your own despite talking through it once, I was _trying_ to gather information from Otacon via codec ab–"

"Otacon?" Sheik interrupted as he perked up. "Can I talk to him?"

"Well, I _was_ going to let you two chat after I was finished," Snake lied, "but since you threw a rock at me…"

"Who's Otacon?" Pit inquired, feeling quite sensible and therefore out of place.

Snake answered, trying to not make it as complicated as it was, "A member of my support team and informational guru."

"Oh," Pit said, seeing if he understood, "kind of like how Palutena tells me information about the tournament and its fighters?"

"Exactly."

"So if you give this…_Otacon_ some defining characteristics of this land, he'll be able to tell us about it?"

To Pit's relief, Snake nodded before going back to the codec. "Let's hope so. _Otacon, you still there? … I need some information about this place._"

Sheik stared up at the sky in distaste at his companions' logical discourse. It wasn't as if he wanted to remain clueless about this land – in fact, he intensely wanted to know more about it since he _knew_ the angry moon up in the sky was the same from his vision – but it reminded him too much of Zelda and how she'd be wanting her body back any minute. And he didn't want that, especially not now.

Despite never actually _communicated_ with her, there were things that Sheik just _knew_ about her. He knew her upbringing, all her memories that he experienced retroactively (an advantage that he had over her since he knew she experienced nothing but confusion from him), her overall personality, and what she liked and disliked. He knew that if she was there instead of him, the first thing she'd try to figure out was _how_ they got there (he suspected she'd have a field day in these circumstances) and then everything she could about the land. She and Snake would have made a powerful informational team, just like they used to before things went sour, in dealing with the rather boring, practical stuff, but Sheik was fairly sure he wanted to be everything she _wasn't_ – even if it meant impeding necessary progress. Marth commented on it one day, expressing his distaste for the _parasite_ in the Woman He Loved's body, but to Sheik it was the biggest compliment he'd ever received.

He just hoped she didn't come back soon and find out the meaning of that pissed off moon hanging in the sky without him.

"…Sheik, you listening to this?" Pit asked, waving a hand up over the…_thing_'s field of vision, which of course brought Sheik back to full attention (and not because of the hand). "Apparently Otacon knows where we are."

He turned to Snake who just finished putting his codec away. "So? What'd he say? Where are we?"

"A land called 'Termina' which is apparently somehow in relation to _your_ land of Hyrule. We're in the western part near the Great Bay, separated from the area by that fence over there."

"I know that place!" Sheik said with excitement at recognition. "It used to be one of the old stages in the previous tournament before you guys came."

Pit looked particularly energized by this information. "Maybe if we go to this Great Bay place, we'll find some way back home? Did Otacon say anything else, Snake? Like, how we got here or how we can get back?"

Snake shook his head, and Pit's wings drooped a little. "He was just as clueless as are. But…he did say something rather alarming."

"Oh?"

"We only have three days," Snake announced and pointed skyward to the moon, "until _that_ thing falls."

The dire circumstances of the land sounded rather familiar to Sheik, as if it was a childhood story told to him long ago (which didn't make sense since he was just kind of _created_ by the princess's nursemaid in a time of need).

"Huh," Sheik murmured, "that sucks."

Pit stared at him for a little. "…Yeah, yeah it does, actually."

It suddenly dawned on him where he heard the story.

"Hey! I've heard about this place. Young Link went on an adventure here before the last tournament and told all of us about it. Like…there was, uh, a moon…a clock, some creepy masks, and uh…boobs," Sheik eloquently explained in full detail, thinking hard.

"Young Link?" Snake asked to clarify. "You mean Toony?"

"Kind of but not," he sighed, "and that's probably the best way I could explain it."

Shaking his head, Pit sighed. "No offense, but the Links are complicated. Split selves, same person in a different timeline…"

Sheik remembered the crisis he was created to handle with the Hero of Time, though it felt like it was a hundred years ago, back when he actually cared about the mission and Zelda's wellbeing; he was supposed to be a temporary magical disguise but for some reason he just never left. His first and regretfully only experience with Young Link was in the second tournament, and since he had known Link before, it felt surreal talking to a version of the hero that was seven years younger (the two, however, had come to scheme mischief together near the end as Sheik's resentment towards Zelda grew, so he was distraught to come back and find his friend replaced with a strange, cat-eyed boy). But Sheik's experience was hardly as surreal as it must have been for Link, to interact with himself at age ten, and Zelda, who had played with Link the young boy and saved the land with Link the young man. The third and current tournament had the added surrealism of _Toon_ Link who was for all intents and purposes Young Link except…not. The boy was completely different than Young Link used to be, with different memories and personalities, and yet they were the same. It depressed Sheik if he remembered Young Link too much, so he tried not to interact with the new one.

He shrugged. "We try not to think about it."

Snake cleared his throat. "So who wants to scale the fence to get to the bay first?"

"I can easily fly over," Pit offered. "How about you?"

"I'll have no problem." Then Snake glanced pointedly at Sheik. "How about you?"

Sheik crossed his arms. "What makes you think I _would_ have a problem? I'm a ninja, if you haven't noticed."

"If you say so," he murmured as the angel began to fly over the fence.

Sullen, Sheik tried not to remember all the arguments he had in the past with Link over his perceived ninja powers as he scaled the obstruction with ease. _Hey Sheik, remember how you told me you'd help me in battle? You said you'd do all these things with me, and even drew that picture of you and me beating up all these stalfos as a personal reward for saving Impa,_ Link had said once they were reunited during the past tournament, and Sheik had promised earlier to cover him during a team battle but failed spectacularly. _But you never did! You just played that stupid harp and spouted bullshit the entire time. Do you know how much bullshit helped me in battle? – Not at all! _Despite the fact that Sheik never followed through with his promises, he and Link still remained comrades throughout the tournament. That is, until Link found out that Roy's early departure was Sheik's unintentional doing. They were still friendly for the remainder of the tournament, but it was never the same. And by the time the third rolled around, too much time had passed and Link had changed too much from his latest adventure for them to still call themselves buddies. They were, at best, friendly acquaintances.

Fortunately, seeing Snake have difficulty with the fence made him smirk in amusement. "No problem, huh?"

"Shut up!" the mercenary called out as he dropped down to the sandy dirt. "I'm not as young as I used to be…"

"Yeah, yeah," Pit laughed as they moseyed to the bay, Snake plotting darkly as he followed behind.

Snake's age was a bit of a joke among the fighters who actually knew of it. Oh sure, Captain Falcon was the confirmed oldest at thirty-seven and had Snake by just a year, but unlike the racer turned bounty hunter, the mercenary was the product of inferior cloning technology that seemed to progress his aging process a bit more than his contemporaries. In addition to that misfortune, he was once injected on a mission three years ago with a genetic virus that could theoretically kill him at any moment by simulating a heart attack. So from advanced cellular degeneration and stress, he aged worse than Falcon although being a year younger, which immediately subjected him to teasing by the younger and more immature others. Of course, he _could_ just tell them of the severe circumstances that brought him into this serious health position, and the joke would be gone, but he was a prideful man who felt he didn't need the pity or sympathy of anyone. He was still visibly irritated by it, though.

Falcon and Snake also suspected Olimar to be in their age group, perhaps even older, but the captain always smartly declined to give a number. However, he did express sympathy for Snake's aging condition. Wario publicly derided (which was a common occurrence against anyone, and the good majority of the Smashers took no notice of this daily routine) Snake at lunch once for having all his joints audibly crack every morning when he climbed out of bed. It incurred a few giggles from those who had made "old man" cracks before, but it was hardly anything Snake couldn't roll his eyes and move on with his day over. Except that Olimar had to make it an issue.

The space pilot was well meaning, of course, but it still grated Snake's nerves when the man told him about potential remedies that would combat common aging ailments, how his wife was beginning to complain of wrinkles and varicose veins, how he should accept and embrace the gray instead of regularly dying his hair (another secret revealed by Wario, this time to a smaller audience, but it pissed Snake off a hell of a lot more than the previous embarrassing announcements about him that his roommate had made over the course of the tournament), and how it was all really just very okay and natural.

Olimar probably didn't deserve C4 well hidden in his room that night.


	4. CHAPTER THREE

**of rabbit flowers and angry moons: chapter three  
**_the chapter in which Sheik and Snake dress in all skin-tight material like a superhero and White presses R1  
_

* * *

Pit had never seen a real, live (well, beaches weren't alive, if you didn't count the ones in Mushroom Kingdom) beach before, but when he gazed upon the Great Bay for the first time, he couldn't help but think they looked so much better on 'television' (Angel Land secret spy portals). For one, the ones on television didn't have these dead and/or dying…fish people on the shore. The angel was pretty sure he could have lived without seeing that.

"The hell is that?" Snake murmured as he pointed towards said fish person on the shore.

Sheik just shrugged, though he kind of knew from his birth adventure. "Better not touch it." Seemed like sound advice at the time…

"And," Snake continued as he pointed skyward this time, just over the pier, "the hell is _that_?"

"Kooloo limpah!" the green…thing floating high bizarrely on a red balloon called out coincidentally (which was just how things seemed to roll, so Pit really should have stopped worrying about the curious string of strange occurrences right about then because it was only going to get worse). "Why, does the great fairy Tingle spy wings and spandex over yonder? Come purchase one of Tingle's homemade maps of the area, dearest sirs!"

Sheik felt quite incensed at this. Really, he thought he had the monopoly on strange, spandex-clad beings, and he wasn't about to let this balloon-flying-Tingle-thing steal his thunder. "Let's not and say we did."

Pit, however, seemed to have some reason within him. "Well, we _could_ really use a map of this area, especially considering how, you know, _none of us are familiar with this place!_"

It was strange. People usually thought of Pit as some kind of nonsensical, idealistic being without knowledge of the outside world – a view he found quite strange and lacking in base. Was it the wings, perhaps? No matter, it didn't change the fact that Pit really just wasn't like that. He was older than all of the Smashers combined, and he spent the majority of his time, when he wasn't out being a divine errand boy to Palutena, watching various events through the Angel Land version of 'television' on another world (which he watched regularly). A bit of a cloud-potato he was, and all his winged friends never ceased in teasing him over it, but he really just found watching other worlds' war, celebration, sex, and overall life incredibly fascinating. And Pit was an angel of discerning judgment. He had experienced enough life by means of that magical vision portal to know what was a good idea, what wasn't, and when it was a good idea to let emotions lead the way. And while others may have criticized that as hardly _living_, the knowledge he gained had never led Pit astray.

So he didn't know why others didn't listen to him often enough…

"I agree with ninja…thing on this one," Snake said, shaking his head. "Something about that…_kooloo limpah_ thing creeps me out."

"Well if you guys are too freaked out, you can stay here while _I _go get the map…"

Sheik found this idea absolutely preposterous and immediately voiced his opposition without a brain-to-mouth filter: "That's so stupid, Pit. How could you even think of something like that? That guy obviously wants something from you! You heard how he called out! He only wants you for your wings and nice little spandex-clad butt. You can't go anywhere near him. But _me_…and Snake, see, we're not like that."

Pit's face grew a little red, and he was about to retort, but Snake interrupted him before he even started with: "Do you even have money on you to buy a map from him?"

Immediately Pit froze, his own logical nature thwarted by an even bigger practicality. "Well…I'm sure we could work something out."

"You know what guys like him will accept instead of money?" Sheik prompted.

"Uh, an errand boy and free source of labor?"

"_No. __**Sex.**_"

To Pit's dismay, Snake crossed his arms and nodded in agreement. "Sheik and I, we know how guys like him think. –"

"Because you're both, you know, _crazy_?"

"–You're an easy target because you look like a little boy. Guys like that will be all over you."

The red in Pit's face grew darker not from embarrassment but angry and incredulity. "_Oh and never mind the fact that I fought my way to the underworld and back for my Goddess_! I'm pretty sure if I could do that, I could handle an overweight pedophile with ease – which is assuming that the map salesman is one, but that assumption is off base to begin with because you have absolutely no proof or _reason_ to believe that he is one! Or even a malicious man!"

Sheik pointed a wild, accusatory finger at Tingle in the distance. "Just look at him! What man dresses in all skin-tight material like a superhero? A man who wants to get inside little kids, that's who!"

Pit stared at his two companions. Truly stared. Never in his entire life had he stared at anything or anyone so hard before. But he stared at them.

And walked away.

Peach and Zelda held an unofficial contest once about who had the best backside in the tournament. After a long and grueling week of rear inspections, the male winner was chosen (Samus won for the females by default, long before the contest was even conceived): Solid Snake. No one was particularly surprised at this as it felt like his best assets were proudly on display with that skin-tight sneaking suit he wore, though there were some who had hoped that other males had some magical cheek action going on beneath more modest clothing simply because Snake came across as so flagrant; in reality, he didn't give a shit about his ass or the contest, and that made it all the more frustrating for some of the losers… Especially Sheik, who was quite livid that he wasn't given an opportunity to take part in the event because Zelda was one of the judges.

However, Sheik wasn't the only one to deem the princesses' way of going about the contest rather unfair. Link's best friend Ilia, a frequent enough visitor to the Smash Estates, belatedly opposed Samus' de facto win because Link was rather convinced that _she_ had the greater ass – one that she used exclusively. And she had a fair amount of support from some of her biggest admirers in the tournament which included Snake himself who thought she was a good woman because she took it from behind; Sheik who supported her for the hell of it; and Pit who, while having no intimate knowledge of this amazing backside of hers, thought she was just quite the nice girl.

_She doesn't count_, Zelda finally ruled once the princesses realized that this was a great enough opposition that they needed to address, and so Samus' title of having the best female behind was intact. Samus didn't quite give a shit, though, and would have been more than happy to hand the title off to Ilia.

Ultimately, it wasn't really about whose backside looked better but instead about Sheik versus Zelda, Snake versus Zelda, and Link versus Zelda. It was kind of a pity that the princess had so much private tension with others that was strung out into the public; she was really quite a charming and benevolent woman, even if she had a passive-aggressive, bitch side (though who didn't, really?). But it was just the result of having a bitter alter ego, spurning a man who probably would have become one of her closest friends if given the proper time, and unintentionally pissing off her country's savior. Politicians seemed somewhat prone to this.

Just as angels were prone to frighteningly loud grumbles from their stomachs.

Pit stopped in mid-stride, and his previous fuming rather vanished in the sudden face of overwhelming hunger. With all the excitement, he had kind of forgotten about hungry he was before…

"Whoa, that was _your_ stomach?" Sheik called out to him, after several frantic yet ignored attempts to woo him back to he and Snake. "I'm impressed!"

Turning around, the teenager shrugged sheepishly and called back, "Guess…I'm really hungry!"

"I guess so!" Sheik volleyed. "We never did go out to eat, did we? Distracted by Snake, yeah? It's all his fault!"

"Well, I wouldn't say that, but we should probably find something to eat!"

"We can eat Snake!"

The man in question just rolled his eyes.

Pit wrinkled his nose, though he was too far away for anyone to tell. "Where would we find one of those?"

"Right!" Sheik pointed to the ex-soldier, "Here!"

"That's so disgusting!"

"Will you two stop yelling already?" Snake growled. "Pit, just come with us and we'll catch something to eat!"

As Pit flew over, he hesitantly asked, "Wait…what do you mean by _catch_?"

Snake crossed his arms. "I mean we find an animal, kill it, and eat it."

Sheer horror engulfed Pit's face.

"Oh get over it."

For as rational and 'experienced' as Pit liked to think he was, he was still a bleeding heart when it came to certain things. _How could you just eat Falco like that?_ he asked Kirby in revulsion after a match once. _He's not __**human**__, no, but he's still a living creature!_ Kirby had just shrugged then, only able to communicate in a limited fashion, and discarded Pit's concern. It wasn't like he (or Yoshi, either) _ate_ Falco, so he didn't get what he was so worked up over. He only hoped, albeit sullenly, that the angel choked on that chicken sandwich he was enjoying so much.

In addition to Pit's protest, someone else made it known that it wasn't very happy with the idea of hunting…

"The hell was that?" Sheik asked as he raised an eyebrow at Snake. "Are you so hungry that you're making weird noises, too?"

Snake furrowed his brows in confusion. "That's…strange, I…" Then he made an expression that was kind of akin to 'Oh-Dear-Jesus-No-Not-Now' as he dug into one of his utility pouches and pulled out…a white pikmin pulling a lion face at him. "No way, White!"

"We're eating him, right?" Sheik suggested though wilted a bit when Snake shot him a dirty look.

"Of course we aren't! That's like using a precious cardboard box for shipping unworthy cargo!"

"Er," Pit mumbled but decided that the potential argument wasn't worth pursuing. Instead, he brightened at the sight of one of Olimar's pikmin squirming around in Snake's grasp rather happily. "How'd the little fellow get here?"

Shaking his head, Snake could only surmise: "…Decided to take a nap in one of my pouches, I guess?"

"And he came out _just_ as we were discussing food, so that has to be a sign?" Sheik tried again.

"No!" the mercenary barked. "White's one of my most talented pupils!" He held White out near Sheik's cowl. "Show him some CQC moves, White!"

For some reason, Peach had it in her head that Olimar was enslaving the pikmin and impeding their evolution from simple plant creatures to upstanding citizens capable of positively contributing to (her) society. And for another strange reason, she deemed it a good idea for _Snake_ to teach them the Proper Way (perhaps this was an attempt on her part in trying to mold him into a civilized and role model-worthy old man, but few truly knew the ways of the Mushroom Kingdom Princess). Predictably, none of this turned out quite as Peach had suspected, and instead of teaching them proper ways of a civilian, he taught the pikmin how to improve their fighting in aid of Olimar (who hadn't yet commiserated Snake's age in such an unintentionally patronizing way) – essentially fashioning them into formidable and efficient plant soldiers. While White wasn't nearly as strong as his buddy, Purple, who became like a tank after Snake was through with him, he was very quick and able to strike when least suspected – a talent that earned him the most favored spot in the ex-soldier's eyes from subconscious associations to Grey Fox.

And so White pulled down Sheik's cowl so quickly the faux-ninja himself wasn't even aware it had happened; the pikmin quickly pressed R1 to punch Sheik's nose, which yielded a disturbing _crack!_, and then held the same button to pull his nose into a choke hold. Then he pressed R1 again while holding a direction on the analog stick to 'throw' the nose, which was rather impossible given White's size in relation to Sheik, but it was very effective in fully breaking his nose. White pulled up the cowl again and hopped back onto Snake's outstretched hand.

The entire event occurred so quickly that no one, least of all Sheik, quite knew it happened.

Sheik arched his brow and was about to question White's abilities when he was stricken with the eventual pain from his nose-break. "'Da hell?" he cried in pain, frustration, and confusion as blood began to flow and soak his formerly white face covering.

Snake stood tall, exceptionally proud of White, and smirked as White mimicked him.

Pit, however, panicked. "What just happened? Sheik, what in the underworld? Are you okay?"

"_**DO!**_" the ninja cried as forcefully and emphatically as he could, meaning to say 'no!'

"Pansy," Snake quipped.

"_I deed a fairy!_"

"Well, um," Pit gestured around Sheik nervously as he wasn't quite sure how to approach the sudden injury or how to fix it, but it just looked like he was making jazz hands with spirit fingers, "there's, uh, there's a man up in the air over there who seems to think he is a fairy! I'll go get him for you, Sheik!"

"_**DO!**_"


	5. CHAPTER FOUR

**of rabbit flowers and angry moons: chapter four  
**_the chapter in which the road is blocked and Zelda comes back._

* * *

There was a time in Snake's life where he actually listened to popular radio instead of sultry jazz, old blues, classic rock, and NPR: when he was young, dumb, and about to sign up for the marine corp. – just in time for the Gulf War, too. It was a no-brainer decision on his part, one that he still didn't regret, but he did regret listening to radio then.

Hip-hop and early rap were just starting to get big when he joined the military (years later, he insisted there was a correlation between it and the war), and David – before he was a part of FOXHOUND and earned his famous code name – listened to it all. He didn't consider himself a fan since he neither liked nor disliked the music, but all the other guys he knew listened with fervor; there was really no reason to not join them. So when Vanilla Ice's _Ice Ice Baby_ came out, he didn't mind it then. He actually found the bass line to be rather catchy, inadvertently leading it to be stuck inside his head on many occasions.

He was practicing in the shooting range after basic one day with _Ice Ice Baby_ running through his brain, pulling near-perfect shots as usual. Not that any of his commanders took much notice since the David of then was a young man who was rather average at most everything he did; his greatest surface talent at the time was his ability to blend into a crowd exceptionally well. It was a usual form of stress-relief at the time, to shoot targets with the last song he happened to hear playing non-stop inside his head (back before he knew first hand the importance of keeping absolute concentration); and since he was shooting a gun, the lines _gunshots rang out like a bell / I grabbed my nine – all I heard were shells_ stood out to him prominently, over and again.

It was sometime on target number fifty that he realized, in relating that particular part of the song with what he was doing, that _Ice Ice Baby_ was an atrocious song. Vanilla Ice was a suburban white boy, just as he had been, but at least David fired a gun in the name of his country (well, he was supposed to anyway, but in reality, with so much ROTC training in high school, he didn't quite know what else to do). And after that realization, the rest of the song just seemed to be unbelievably ridiculous – especially the line about Vanilla Ice being _a lyrical poet_.

Unfortunately, with his mind elsewhere for the rest of the session, his performance suffered. He didn't think too much of it, though, until one of his crueler commanders revealed he had observed that last half by chance and mused aloud that the young man would never amount to anything within the military. And then David stood out remarkably after that, going on to taking part in FOXHOUND and becoming the legendary Solid Snake.

Go figure.

He still couldn't stand the song, though. And listening to Sheik whine to Pit with his nose stuffed up with blood in a sad attempt to garner sympathy and affection from the angel was kind of like hearing it over…and over…and over…and over…and over…and…

The sound of a cow carried over a distance.

Pit's wings perked up as he asked, "Did anyone else hear that? A…mooing sound!"

"I heard lunch," Snake said bluntly, "if that's what you're asking."

Sheik scowled at the prospect of cows, lunch, and pretty much anything that wasn't him bitching to Pit, leaning against Pit for support, being tickled by Pit's wings, and tasting blood every time he swallowed (he couldn't explain why he liked that). When he got the chance, he was going to roast that Nayru-damned pikmin over a fire and eat it in front of Snake…after he punched White in the nose (regardless of whether or not he actually had one) so he, too, could experience what a broken nose was like, that is.

"We must be near a farm and people then, right?"

No one really responded to Pit's enthusiasm, and they walked along a path with Sheik telling the angel how he saved a burning village once (never mind the fact that he torched it to begin with in a hopeless attempt to smoke out an invisible-hands monster that had knocked out the Hero of Time) – but everyone was too hungry to care or even listen, so the trek might as well have been in silence.

Then Pit looked up. "Whoa, hey, there's that map-seller again! How'd he get here so fast…?"

Sheik groaned.

"You know," Pit continued, "as much as you two dislike that Tingle guy, I really do think it would be a good idea to purchase a map from him. We're lost in a strange land, and –"

"_No_," the faux-ninja and not faux-mercenary said in unison, and that was that; so they moved on map-less much to Pit's frustration.

It wasn't much longer until they saw that large stones blocked the path and an overweight man was attempting to break them apart with a pitiful hammer.

Immediately Pit's wings drooped. "Oh no way. Come on now, I can't believe there are seriously rocks there. And I bet you anything that there's a farm over there with all this delicious food…" His stomach groaned to emphasize his point and hunger.

Snake growled in aggravation and shot Sheik a dirty look when he suggested, once again, that they eat White (who merely threatened him with a tiny fist).

The man trying to open up the path put down his hammer when he took notice of them. "You boys going to Romani Ranch? I should have the path open in about two days if you want to wait around…"

"_What_?" This was Pit.

"_Gurururururrrrrr_!" This was Pit's stomach.

The situation was getting rather serious.

(And repetitive).

His wings fluttering wildly in distress, the angel turned back to Snake and pleaded, "I know you always have bombs and things in matches! Don't you have any on you?"

With a sigh, Snake shook his head, and Sheik wilted in disappointment. "I haven't been carrying any explosives on me because of the tournament rules…but with the right materials, I could make one."

"Sweet!" Pit exclaimed happily and jumped up and down excitedly. Unknown to most, he really, _really_ liked explosions – the bigger the better – and car chases. And because of these things, he really liked hanging out and Brawling with Solid Snake, Captain Falcon, and the anthropomorphic space pilots. But the instances where he was able to be around the fighters he was in awe with were few and far between because Peach and Zelda always insisted he help them with chores and event planning (he suspected it was because they knew he just couldn't say no); Olimar thought he was a nice boy and frequently set up play dates for Pit and his pikmin (the angel always pretended it was a drag and he was just doing it to be nice, but he really did love playing hide and seek in the garden with the plant creatures); and the Links always wanted to refine their archery skills with him (he had no problem with this, but the Hylians' constant rivalry left him feeling a little left out and uncomfortable). And really, Pit was just a nice guy so he couldn't say no to anyone, but it left him with little time to do what _he_ genuinely wanted to do.

Sheik tried to scowl at the fact that Snake made Pit happy and not _him_, but he, too, was intensely excited at the idea of making an explosive from scratch – which he didn't even know was possible. Oh the possibilities…

"Let's see," Snake murmured, "anyone have a battery?"

They shook their heads no.

"Gunpowder?"

No.

"Diesel fuel?"

Again, no.

"Fertilizer?"

"Yes," Pit answered and then pointed past the rocks to where he imagined the farm to be, "over there."

"If I knew the area and chemical compound of some of the local plants I might be able to do something, but as it is…"

Sheik crossed his arms huffily. "Dis really suggs." Then he winced.

Fortunately, Pit caught the gesture. "Huh? Is anything wrong, Sheik? Is your nose okay?"

"Zelda," he murmured. "I'b beed repressig her for a log tibe… I'b hugry ad hurtig ad tired ad…"

Snake cocked his head. "The hell is he saying? I can't speak broken-nosed loser."

Pit shot the ex-soldier a _look_ and then translated with a degree of perturbation, "He's saying that he's hungry, tired, in pain…and it's getting hard to hold Zelda back. Am I right?"

Sheik nodded.

It was actually the longest Sheik had been Sheik without interruption. While he considered letting her have her body back after White broke his nose, he couldn't bear the thought of her taking over and actually finding that rabbit flower field – or worse, finding a way back. She would flip her shit, he knew, at being _kidnapped_ and taken to a strange land without an immediate route back without her outright consent.

Zelda was coming on strong in trying to take her body back, but he couldn't just let her have it now… Something had to be done.

"Sdake," he said as he led the other two so that they were out of the overweight stranger's view, "wed Zelda cubs, she's dot goig to be happy. So you hab to keep her…hostage…udtil she lets be back. Please."

Snake deferred to Pit, who blanched at Sheik's instructions.

"Uh, he's saying that…you have to hold Zelda _hostage_ until she lets Sheik have her body back. She's not going to be happy so…"

"She'll hreak so use horse."

"_Horse_? The hell?"

"_I cad't say e'hhs okay?_"

Pit giggled. "_Freak_ and _force_. He's having trouble with _f_'s."

Chuckling, Snake nodded to White. "Think you can help out, buddy?" Of course, the pikmin nodded resolutely as the ex-soldier moved quickly to place Sheik in an interrogation hold with White in his right hand in lieu of a knife.

Sheik stared at White's beady little eyes with mild fear and was so glad Zelda would be subjected to him instead…

"Okay Pit, I'm counting on you to keep her calm until Sheik comes back."

Nervous and even a little terrified at what he couldn't _believe_ was about to transpire, Pit just nodded quickly.

Again, Snake couldn't repress a chuckle. "This is going to be fun… Alright, Sheik, let her in."

Sheik's body relaxed in Snake's hold, almost as if he was falling asleep, and then there was an incredible warmth that reminded the mercenary of all the nights he spent drinking in front of the television with Hal and watching all those old and cheesy sci-fi movies he pretended he didn't adore, of lying in front of his fireplace in Alaska flanked by Meryl and his huskies back when things between them were still good, of successfully completing a mission and returning home without hitch.

The shape of Sheik's body began to change in his arms as well, which was probably one of the creepiest and disconcerting things he had ever felt: Sheik's shoulders narrowed while his hips and chest filled out. Then the alter ego's skin-tight suit gave way to a heavy dress while the head wrapping disappeared and long, light brown hair spilled out into Snake's face.

And, finally, the body he held tensed ferociously and let out a shrill woman's scream at the sight of White (who was quite offended). She struggled wildly in Snake's grip, but he was expecting that and had kept hold of a plenty stronger man before without problem; she was no match for him physically. "_Who is this?_" she demanded. "_Unhand me this instance!_"

Snake revealed himself with a dark and amused chuckle directly in her ear as Pit quickly came into her view, apologizing profusely. She only threw an impromptu fireball at the angel and tried to kick the mercenary while screeching at the ugly, white pikmin in her face.

Zelda was definitely back.


	6. CHAPTER FIVE

**of rabbit flowers and angry moons: chapter five  
**_in which Snake and Zelda hash it out and Pit looks at clouds_

* * *

When he allowed himself time for self-reflection and egoism, Pit liked to think he was intelligent, rational, valiant, handsome, and diplomatic. After all, he was the Great Goddess Palutena's prized captain, and She counted on him daily to mollify their troops when they were disheartened or weary, to sooth the other angels' wounds when things weren't going their way, and most importantly to curb Her own anger when miffed about some trifle event or another – for his great goddess rarely wasted Her rage on significant matters. The other angels saw Her as wise and constant in the face of strife, but they never saw Her fly off the handle if the morning paper was an hour late.

So Pit was fairly certain he could calm Princess Zelda's fury at learning that her body had stolen her to a strange land without permission and a way back…and that he and Snake were accomplices.

"Zelda, I know you're angry – and you have _every right_ to be – but Snake and I have a very good reas–"

Pit was also very wrong in this instance.

And as such he found himself lying on the dirt road from one of Zelda's mean high kicks with his jaw aching like no other, staring vapidly at the menacing moon above (obvious even in broad daylight).

With the moon there were familiar clouds. Pit knew and had seen enough of clouds in Angel Land, but in these particular circumstances, the wisps in the sky seemed so novel and intriguing. There were clouds that looked like Smash Balls, birds, ninjas, and gumball machines high up in the sky, parading about like they hadn't a care in the world or that they knew not of the tragic fate of this strange land. They were sadly oblivious, he thought, but still very pretty. And so he continued to watch them with a childlike fascination.

(In addition to being intelligent, rational, valiant, handsome, and diplomatic, Pit was also very sensible and knew a hopeless situation when he saw it. So he left it in Snake's hands to churn out a miracle in dealing with the ferocious princess.

Snake's hands were rather full at the moment, though.)

"If you do not let me go and tell me what the _hell _is going on here," the princess seethed, "mark my words for I _will_ make you live to regret it!"

The dark chuckle Snake emitted only made Zelda's temper flare. "Bitch, I've survived more troubles than your pretty little head could ever _dream_ of, including the deadly poisonous hamsters of Zanzibar Land that could kill a grown man with one bite. So there's nothing you could _ever_ do or say that would intimidate me."

In his arms Zelda's body took on a semblance of relaxation for the first time since Sheik gave way to her. "Intimidation was not my intention," she murmured steadily. "Now a _promise_ on the other hand…"

He laughed fully, slightly amused yet holding darker undertone. "Your _promises_ mean very little to me, Zelda."

"Just as our friendship?" she asked, and whether it was in sarcasm, resentment, or sadness not even she could tell.

"As much as I apparently meant to you!"

She stilled and glanced at him furtively while trying to make it appear that she was staring at White who was ready for anything at his mentor's command. "…You do mean something…to me…. More than a lot of people, that is."

Snake scoffed and quoted something that still stung in his mind, "'_Not if you were the last man on earth_', eh? Sound familiar?" He expected her to feel guilty or at the very least staunchly defend herself, but instead she laughed, wholly and heartily, which was something he certainly did _not_ expect.

"Is _that_ what this is about? Why you've been extraordinarily distant every time I try to talk to you? Seemingly _disdain_ me with your eyes?"

He tightened his hold on her and White growled (which really came out as a sort of cute and pathetic mewing sound, but Snake appreciated the sentiment just the same). "And why not? Even if I were _the_ last man on earth, you still wouldn't favor me for any reason at all? That's rather harsh, Zelda."

"Aww, the bruise went down deep did it?" she cooed teasingly. "But it still remains a truthful statement, harsh or not, and I would never _get_ with you for any motive, even if we really _were_ the last two beings in existence."

Snake knew he sounded like a petulant child, but he couldn't stop himself. "And why not?"

She turned her head and stared at him like he was stupid. "…Because I am a lesbian?"

He froze from the inside out and stared at her with a blank and vague expression.

And she stared back.

He stared more.

She continued to hold his gaze.

Finally, a rash heat from his cheeks seemed to thaw him fully, and he said in the minutest voice, "…Oh."

"You did not know?" Zelda asked with an arched brow (which only increased the red in his face). "I was of the opinion that you were smarter and more perceptive than that…" She avoided saying outright that he was dim but the judgment resounded loudly to Snake anyway.

"Well," he managed as he tried to defend himself, "how was I supposed to know?"

She put on a theatrically thoughtful face. "Oh, I don't know…_how about my outward sexual interest in other women_? We used to suggestively ogle Samus in her Zero Suit together when we thought she didn't notice for Nayru's sake."

"_I just thought you were _cool_ like that!_"

Rolling her eyes, Zelda countered, "_How about I'm just _lesbian_ like that!_" Then she sighed and added, "Well, as it seems you are thicker than DeDeDe, it might aid you in the future to realize that the balance of the Triforce holders are _also_ homosexual. Although I cannot pretend to fathom why the Goddesses would do that. Just something about being born with those triangles… I really cannot understand their will at times."

Her last few remarks were completely lost on Snake, however, as he took in and processed all the extraneous information. Zelda, Link, Toon Link, and Ganondorf, all…

Of all the fighters in the tournament, Solid Snake was the one most familiar with all three of the Hylians – save for Ganondorf, obviously, though his relationship with them was rather unpleasant for various reasons (he wasn't even Hylian anyway). He and Zelda had hit it off from the moment they first met, and Zelda loved having someone around that was both doting and intelligent, even though they hardly agreed on any subject.

Toon Link followed Zelda around almost like a shadow, something that she thought was sweet yet creepy (though his eyes had more to do with the latter), so, by association, Snake became acquainted with him as well. The two of them found that, despite the large age gap, they had quite a bit of things in common, namely their penchant for boxes, crates, and barrels (from what the little boy told him of a captain named Linebeck who would hide in crates, Snake recalled that he really wanted to meet him, too).

There would be days where they would spend hours upon hours constructing complex box mazes and fortresses. They had a box moat once and somehow convinced the Pokemon to get inside and ward off trespassers. Lucario would never admit it, but he rather enjoyed mangling Kirby that day.

"Oh."

When things went sour between the princess and mercenary, Snake turned to Link by proxy since he was a Hylian like Zelda; had a strange battle experience unlike Zelda; and was commonly at the bar, which Snake himself frequented after Zelda shot him down. Although there were other fighters that Snake could have turned to (Fox and Captain Falcon he got along with in particular), he found it quite easy to commiserate over Zelda with Link, who liked to rant about her when he got particularly intoxicated, but only because she had the audacity to mortify him in front of damn near the entire line up.

'_Dude, you have to let the dress thing __**go**__,'_ Falco used to slur. _'There are a number of perfectly valid reasons why you would have some of her best dresses in your closet: you're hopelessly infatuated with her and like to smell her clothes every night, you're saving them from evil, you found them in the wash and kept forgetting to give them back to her… I mean, it's not like you're actually a cross dresser, right?'_

Link would never actually deign to a response and always just drank a whole lot more.

However, they became friends over this, and from his association with Link, Snake was even able to _know_ Link's best friend Ilia. Now Ilia…Ilia was a good woman; she let him do it from behind. He was always very glad to have befriended the incredibly generous Link when she came around. Though, from Zelda's suggestion, he couldn't shake being suspicious of the Hylians. After all, they were all too eager to make friends with him…

"_Oh_." Then Snake thought about it some more. "Are you sure about _Toony_? He always seemed pretty normal…"

Zelda decided to ignore the 'normal' part. "Hmm, unlike Ganondorf, Link, and I, Toony was not born with a Triforce piece but earned it on one of his adventures. And he appears to be rather equally charmed by both Tetra and that captain…"

Snake decided that Toony was still too young and tried to stop thinking about it.


	7. CHAPTER SIX

**of rabbit flowers and angry moons: chapter six  
**_the chapter in which Terminian humor and lore are expounded upon, and Zelda is still there._

There is a timeline inconsistency in CHAPTER TWO. For anyone who can accurately tell me what it is, also give a request of what you'd like to see in this story, and I'll try to work it in.

P.S., PSI Magnet doesn't really work that way, but it does in this story so shh.

* * *

White was born a plant critter, a root bug fond of playing with bottle caps and having races with the insects. He knew of his terrible(y boring) past, and yet he had _overcome_ it and become something more thanks to the strange prodding of Princess Peach and the awesome tutelage of Solid Snake. And thanks to said man, White was no longer a carefree child of nature but a hardcore child of battle.

At the current state of things, White and his brothers were in the position to surpass Snake as far as CQC (whom he only taught to his most talented of pupils when he was a bit overzealous about his mentoring job once; that was also the day he expressed interest in the taste of raw snakes and importing singing sand from Okinawa, but he soon recovered and requested that no one mention anything about his little episode ever again) and combat techniques went. However they were curious little beings, intrigued by the concept of Metal Gears and forming ideas amongst themselves of building a Plant Gear, which would help rid their planet of Bulborbs so their siblings could play out at night.

Given the future, White and the other pikmin would have built their Plant Gear, and Snake would have had to put a stop to his most beloved of children. Their clash would have culminated to the pikmin forming a hidden yet very influential group within the Smash Estates cleverly called the Pikmin; and Snake would have formed his own group of mercenaries, retreating to the garage where Star Fox's landmasters were in order to free themselves from the influence of the Pikmin – calling it Box Heaven. White would have infiltrated this seemingly impenetrable fortress of cardboard, however, and a terribly tragic yet epic showdown between himself and Snake would have occurred. The world never would have been the same.

Fortunately the future would not play out that way, so Smash Estates was safe…for now.

With master-betrayal not even an infant concept in his tiny plant brain, White stared at Zelda with seed-like eyes.

_He was a machine._

The Princess didn't care and flicked him aside to land near Pit, who had decided to take a nice catnap. Instead she demanded, "So tell me, _Snake_, what is this place? Why have you two brought me here?"

Too internally shaken at considering the idea that Toon Link had any sort of sexuality (Snake liked them young but not _that_ young), he decided to comply just this once. "This place is called Termina, and there is an angry moon in the sky that's going fall in three days. That's about all the intelligence we've been able to gather as of yet. …Well, also, there's a creepy spandex-wearing midget freak floating around in a balloon and selling maps, but we've tried to ignore him."

Again, Zelda didn't care, as the only thing she was concerned with was _Termina_. "…I know this place," she stated, somewhat in shock and deep memory searching. "Termina…the name of the land forsaken by the Goddesses…a land once doomed to experience the same three days over and again, a never-ending loop. But according to esoteric legend, the same one that speaks of a time traveling hero and worldwide flood, Termina's cycle was supposed to have been broken by a young hero – _the_ legendary hero seven years younger yet older… That…that was Young Link, actually."

Processing the information, Snake remembered both Link and Zelda had mentioned Young Link at least once. The pintsized hero was technically the same _person_ as Link yet seven years younger – the age when he first pulled the time-travel-enabling Master Sword from the pedestal in an attempt to save the country from Ganondorf's influence. The result of that action, of lifting the seal on the Sacred Realm and inadvertently allowing Ganondorf to slip in and touch the Triforce, led the Goddesses to render the boy virtually comatose for seven years until he was physically able to wield the Master Sword and take down the King of Evil. Princess Zelda attempted to return the Hero of Time to his own time to undo all their mistakes and give him a second chance at childhood after defeating Ganon, but as she played the fabled Ocarina of Time, nothing happened. Puzzled, they ignored yet another of their failures and rebuilt Hyrule with Zelda taking her place as sovereign princess. When asked by their fellow fighters in the tournament about those years, of what really happened in their first crisis together, they treated it as a dirty secret they wanted no one else in on despite the fact that the tale was well known to all.

The first periodic Smash tournament occurred after a few months of peace, stealing Link away for a short period of time, and then the second tournament happened shortly thereafter, this time inviting the princess herself. It was by Ganondorf and Young Link's existences in the tournament that they realized that the Ocarina of Time really did send Link back, splitting Hyrule's timeline in the process, and thus there were two.

(Snake could really empathize with meeting someone who was you but wasn't – clones, almost.)

Yet Young Link didn't return for the third tournament and in his stead was the chipper yet terminally-confused-about-his-past Toon Link. …But Termina obviously remained, still trapped in limbo.

"Do you…think something happened to him? Young Link, that is," Snake mused though even within his thoughts he still didn't relax his grip on the princess.

"I do not know," she admitted, "though I am quite puzzled as to why you, Pit, Sheik" (she spoke his name like a curse, which it often was) "and, by default, _myself_, are in this place."

"Sheik tried to flash us," Pit offered, still appearing as if he was still napping. "And _poof_, we're here."

Zelda stared at him. She would have thrown something at him, really, if she could at all move. "I'm not very appreciative of jokes at the moment, Pit…"

"No joke, princess," Snake supported.

She seemed to consider this. "…Well?"

"Well what?"

"What was the verdict?" she asked. "Is Sheik male or female?"

Pit stretched and shielded his eyes from the sun as he slowly opened them. "Yeah, that's the thing. Sheik dropped his pants, and we were magically transported here without any knowledge of what we saw."

"The Goddesses are rather fond of sick jokes…."

Snake tightened his hold. "So, any ideas on how to get back?"

"I still think we should go back to the beach," Pit suggested. "That is where we arrived, after all."

"Mm, after lunch."

"You go break those rocks, then."

Zelda looked from Snake to Pit inquisitively.

Pit explained: "See those rocks that fat guy over there is trying to break? Just beyond them is a ranch with no doubt delicious food for us to eat. And we're really, really hungry, see?"

"And you three can't go elsewhere? Find a village or hunt? That map-seller you mentioned would probably be useful."

Brightening up, Pit jumped to his feet, overjoyed that someone else was smart enough to see the reasonable thing to do. "See? Exactly, Princess! That's what I keep telling these guys!"

"_No_," Snake insisted, and White tried to growl.

"And, let me guess, you boys don't happen to have your weapons on you?"

"Nope."

Snake seemed to recall something then. "Hey Princess, can't you use that Din's Fire thing outside the arena? You've caused explosions before with it…"

Displays of psychic and magical abilities were strictly prohibited except for harmless, practical use. The princesses had to extensively explain to Ness and Lucas on many occasions that _practical_ jokes do not count (the psychic boys seemed to conveniently forget this, though, when faced with any opportunity – although Lucas was often merely caught up in Ness and Toon Link's antics and rarely ever initiated anything on his own).

Fear of punishment be damned, Ness was rather fond of using his psychic powers outside of battle for the most trivial of purposes: electrocuting Pikachu in revenge (how everyone appreciated the boy in those moments); temporarily blinding the princesses and various other authority figures within the mansion in order to make a quick getaway when cornered about his mischief-making (the children were grateful; the adults were pissed); and using PSI Magnet in his various attempts to eventually secure Captain Falcon's helmet and find out what the racer really looks like…though usually he just secured other things like Link's earrings, Peach's crown, and occasionally Falcon's disturbing nipple-buttons (he actually really kind of hated Ness for that if he thought about it for too long).

Quite unlike Ness, if Zelda used her magical abilities, it was in strict adherence to policy. However, these harmless, practical uses often went wrong. No matter how hard she tried to light a match with Din's Fire, it always ended in an unintended explosion, and Zelda gave up a _long_ time ago on using Farore's Wind to effortlessly travel from one place to another. On several instances she ended up where she didn't intend; a couple of times she actually transported _into_ someone which resulted in a magical yet very painful bang; and the very last time she used Farore's Wind Zelda ended up in Fox and Falco's room, and she really hoped they were just engaging in some friendly wrestling activity because oh Goddesses Din, Nayru, and Farore Who Art In The Sacred Realm she really just wanted to forget she ever saw it and forget that such a thing ever occurred, even though she doesn't remember that thing, whatever it was, that happened after she popped in and saw them (oh no, no, no she didn't), and oh Goddesses Din, Nayru, and Farore Who Art In The Sacred Realm she really just sincerely hoped from the bottom of her heart that they were just wrestling.

In her lifetime, Zelda has accumulated many scars, both mental and physical.

"…Yes," she murmured in response to Snake's question, thought beginning to derail.

"_So_," Pit perked up, "you think you can blast those boulders away for us?"

Zelda went back to reality and contemplated this for a bit. Finally, she asked, "If I do…what is in it for me?"

"Uh, we don't _starve_," said the angel plainly. "_You_ don't starve."

She shook her head in dismissal. "I have confidence that if worst comes to worst, you will find a source of food."

"I'll hook you up with some chicks I know," Snake offered.

Looking very skeptical, Zelda raised her eyebrow. "And who might be those _chicks_?"

Pit flapped his wings in anticipation, and White stood at rapt attention while Snake took a few moments to answer.

"Mei Ling? She never takes my come-ons seriously. If you're into hot redheads, Meryl?"

"…Who's Meryl?"

"She's, ah…an ex. Left after six months, actually."

Zelda could just _see_ how his brain was beginning to work and had to stop it. "_Snake_," she said steadily, "_just because a woman rejects you does not mean that she is a lesbian._"

His lips initially flat-lined to keep from asking _it doesn't?_ Instead, he quipped, "Well…it _should_."

"Mm, what about my Goddess Palutena?" Pit suggested easily with his legs crossed and White now perched on his head. "I know She's a Goddess and all, but you _are_ Hylian Royalty with a connection to your own goddesses. She'd probably find you very pretty. I can put in a lot of good words for you!"

"A…Goddess?" Zelda couldn't deny that the idea was quite appealing. "I…alright. You work some magic on your end, Pit, and I'll work some on mine."

He punched the air. "Great! I won't let you down, princess! I'm almost positive that She'd really like you!"

She turned to look to Snake. "If you would let me go…"

"How do I know you're not going to attack either of us once I do? We did," he said, though it was more like _he_ did since Pit took a nap for a good portion of her stay, "hold you hostage, after all."

Taking on that superior and cold air that she was so talented at, Zelda thinly smiled. "If I had any _serious_ inclinations towards attacking, I would have done it."

Rolling her eyes and muting any contrarian comments, Snake released her.

The fat man working on breaking the rocks that blocked the Milk Road, whose name was, indeed, Fat Man (his mother had a sick sense of humor), was an ordinary kind of guy. He liked to work with his hands on whatever project he found himself engaged in, and he was the type of guy who, once engaged, saw the activity through until the end.

Which is why he refused to divorce his wife, inappropriately named Little Boy (her surname was Boy, which would have made her grade school years painful no matter what, but her father, for shits and giggles, decided to go the extra mile; but Terminian humor was rarely found funny to those at the butt-end of the joke, and so Little Boy never spoke to her father again upon realizing her name at age three). Little Boy was quite the knockout bombshell, if only to spite her name, but trauma from her youth also made her into an embittered woman. She only married Fat Man, she said to him every day, because he was the only man she could find who did not mind screwing a Little Boy. And in bed, subsequent jokes were rife (again, Terminian humor was rather malicious).

Fat Man's life changed that day, though, upon witnessing a nice-looking girl in an ornate dress shooting a fireball from her hands – which just happened to speed _right to him_ because both this girl and her two male companions (where had that other one gone anyway?) forgot to tell him to _get out of the way_. Staring into the depths of this terrifying display of magic, his life passed before his eyes – and he realized how sad it was to begin with. …But no longer. He refused to be the butt of anyone's jokes anymore; he refused to take abuse from his wife over her name; _he refused to be burnt to a crisp by this flaming orb_.

Like Terminian humor, gravity was normally rather unkind to Fat Man, but on that day it stepped aside and let the man work some magic of his own:

First he slowed down time. It was all of his own doing upon realizing he could no longer be the man he was before, he thought, because he had the sneaking suspicion that time was a soft metal that could be easily molded. Those dreams everyone had from time to time of young boys in skirts and reliving the same three days over and again couldn't be normal, Fat Man was convinced, though everyone told him he was crazy for suggesting otherwise. And as such, time yielded for him so he could perform the most amazing feat of his life.

The Fat Man of yesterday was a man who firmly believed in being rooted to the ground, quite unlike the Bombers Gang who often took to the roofs of Clock Town with great, artificial wings and jumped off with hopes of flying into the sky (like the Takkuri bird who, when the children were able to sneak past the soldiers guarding the town exits, often stole their greatest treasures) only to spend the rest of the day at the healer's. But the Fat Man of today hurled himself off his feet and _away_ from the fire swirling and spinning like a top on its side.

His twirling and whirling grew faster and faster until gravity set in once again – but Fat Man was rotating so rapidly that time slowed even further, and space twisted around him. Until the universe came to an abrupt halt.

And then he was gone.


	8. CHAPTER SEVEN

**of rabbit flowers and angry moons: chapter seven  
**_the chapter in which nothing of importance happens_

* * *

"Palutena," Pit breathed, "that smells heavenly."

Sheik, who came back completely healed shortly after Zelda's little magic display, "Cow manure?"

"Yes."

Snake rolled his eyes and cupped a hand over his nose; White copied.

Romani Ranch was indeed permeated by the scent of cow manure alongside fresh milk. That meant…

His stomach growling, Pit smiled and rubbed it. "I'm so hungry that I'm not even hungry anymore. But I'll be glad to finally eat!"

"I'll be glad when you eat, too, because you're starting to not make sense," Snake stated under his breath as the welcoming ranch buildings came into view: silo, barn, and main house with smaller buildings speckling the landscape in the distance.

But no one except White heard his words, too busy running off to the buildings like a bunch of land runners staking their claim (of food, which they weren't exactly positive was available; Sheik speculated that if not then they'd have to eat White. White gave his protests in angry hand motions).

Way back when he was a tiny plant who actually believed his mother (the earth) when she told him he could do and be anything he wanted, White dreamed of being an interpretive dancer. When his mother said "don't eat this, I mean it, don't, _don't_, do it and you're grounded", he'd do a little dance to convey this message to his siblings; they never got it. This whole phase of his life lasted about a day, and then the community forced him into labor for the greater good, which exhausted and killed his dreams of individuality. It was probably for the best because White also wanted to be a polka dotted, flaming belly dancer, but even absurdity, bless its soul, has its limits.

"Grr, whatever," Snake murmured, actually saying 'grr', which kind of came out like: 'geerrr'. He was actually kind of glad he was relatively alone then (pikmin don't count).

Meanwhile, a little girl aiming at them with a bow aborted any plans Sheik and Pit had about raiding the ranch for sustenance (which isn't something they could find anywhere _here_, ever).

"Don't move, bandits! Romani means it! Romani will fill you with holes!"

The little dog at her feet barked incessantly.

Sheik groaned because _he had met Richard_, the annoying little shit of a _mutt_ who thought he had the run of the Market and later Kakariko Village until a ReDead finally got him one night (Sheik will deny until he dies that he had anything to do with throwing Richard down the mysteriously kind-of-there-but-not-really hole in front of the carpenters' house). He went to look for holes, ignoring the threat that he would become the hole to throw this dog into (which he never did, that is).

"Romani," Pit pleaded rather diplomatically as always, "please put down the bow! You could really hurt someone with that. We're not _bandits_ or whatever – we're just starving travelers in search of food. Are your parents home? If you get them and sa—"

_Fwish!_

Pit blinked and strained his eyes up to look at the…arrow on his forehead. A suction cup. Oh thank Palutena, she was really looking out for him.

"Pit! Pit!" Sheik whispered rather loudly as he kept a rigid pose so as not to incur this little girl's wrath. "I don't know if you've noticed this or not, but you have an arrow stuck in the middle of your forehead! Are you dead yet?"

The angel plucked the arrow off and threw it at him. "Roman—"

"_You must be aliens!_" she accused with another arrow ready in the bow for exciting suction cup action. "How else would you know Romani's name?"

Pit was about to reply with a smartass comment that would no doubt get that stupid ninja-guy to fawn over him some more when Snake suddenly appeared behind the girl (stealth skills finally put to some use), lifting her into the air by the back of her dress.

"A name means nothing on the battlefield," he uttered just before another redhead came barreling from the back into their little fray.

"This isn't a battlefield, though!" Pit protested.

But with the newcomer brandishing…damp towels, it was _now_.

"_What are you doing to my sister, you creep!_ Let her go!" the angry towel-hitting redhead yelled as she tried to beat up Snake with the fabric.

He rolled his eyes. "Is this supposed to hu—" _Fwip!_ "Ow!" Snake let Romani go as his body went rigid in the spine. Oh this redhead had aim alright. He rubbed his (chiseled and detailed and so nicely shaded but no one's calling attention to it at all, no) ass.

Romani struck it with a suction arrow.

"Cut it out!"

"Listen everyone," Pit tried to say. "Just calm down! We mean no harm!"

However, the other redhead was much louder. "_Who are you and what are you doing here?!_ Answer me, bandits!"

Not-Richard barked, and White growled in return.

Groaning, Pit tried again, "We're not bandits!"

"Liar, liar," Romani sang, but her sister seemed more reasonable.

"You're not…?"

"No," Pit answered.

The older redhead blanched. "…_Oh no_. You aren't…_customers_ are you?!"

"Yes!" This time it was Sheik, looking forward to making this woman feel terrible.

"I am _so _sorry! We've been having bandit problems, and _I am so, so very sorry!_" She angrily turned to her sister. "Romani! Why did you attack them?"

Romani crossed her arms as the dog ran circles around her. "They look weird!"

They did, but that wasn't the point.

And her sister didn't seem to consider that a valid reason. "Please forgive my sister! She's young and rambunctious and _sweet moon Romani I can't believe you shot them!_ But please, please, if there is _anything_ I can do, please do not hesitate to let me know! I'm Cremia, the owner of Romani Ranch, and _I am so, so honestly sorry for my sister's actions!_"

Objecting to the blame being placed solely on her, Romani crossed her arms. "But sister came out with the towel, too, and-"

"_Quiet!_"

Snake spoke up before Sheik could ruin the opportunity (despite granting it to them). "Feed us, and we'll call everything even."

Pit's wings fluttered excitedly. "Oh please, _please_, we are _starving_!"

Cremia took them in, and they didn't have to eat White after all – though said pikmin in question stayed outside to munch on some grass and chill with a strange horse.

White waved its arms and chirped at it in its alien tongue.

The horse responded by not eating him.

Life was pretty good.


	9. CHAPTER EIGHT

**of rabbit flowers and angry moons: chapter eight  
**_the chapter in which we say goodbye_

I certainly didn't mean for over a year to go by between chapters especially since this was my don't-worry-about-it-have-fun-and-write-shit story. It's kind of pathetic that this happened as this entire chapter took only two hours to write without interruption or boredom which made me realize what a treasure I had accidentally ignored. We're only a third of the way through, and even though the story is irreverently offensive at times with no valid characterization whatsoever I still love this little piece of shit. So thanks to those of you who are still interested enough to read, and hello to those of you who have only just begun. I love you all just as I love this story, and I promise it won't happen again.

* * *

Flaunting the skills he claimed Sheik would never have with the ladies (though Sheik was quick to retort that those were skills he never wanted to have, which just reminded Snake about that whole Triforce thing and sent him down the path of mental disturbance at Toon Link again), Snake was quick in his attempts to cozy up to Cremia after Romani had seemingly gone to bed that night. He complimented her, smiled a lot, and cracked stupid jokes, and in return she captured his heart by mostly ignoring them and subjecting them all to her elaborate and strange sales pitch for the strange, almost mystical milk they sold. That was until Cremia decided she was going to spend the remainder of the night moving furniture.

"It needs a _man's_ touch," she said as drew out the future placement of an assortment of table and chairs.

Obviously, she chose Snake for the grand duty; Snake thought it was because she was warming up to him and wanted some alone time but in reality it was because she considered Pit a little boy and wasn't even aware that Sheik was a man(womanthing).

Pit was offended.

Unfortunately it was a misconception that would plague his entire life from start to finish. After all, no one ever suspected that the angel boy had once been a heroic fighter and could lift or more than one would typically expect with those scrawny little teenage-looking arms of his. At the start of the tournament, Pit was a wide-eyed, naïve angel who believed that _things would be different _now that he was out of Angel Land and in the company of fellow badasses. But Pit was wrong. Despite all he had been through for the sake of his Goddess and despite said Goddess's false reassurances that Pit was as manly as Captain Falcon and Solid Snake, no one treated Pit seriously. He was constantly being roped into things he didn't want to do by the women and the men never quite accepted him as one of their own. Something was _off_ they felt and, well, _Pit was hurt_. He cried himself to sleep most nights, and it was incredibly fortunate that he had R.O.B. as a roommate because the robot had little data on what human(ish) tears were anyway.

And the fact that he _did_ have R.O.B. as a roommate added to that feeling of isolation. Why did he have to be stuck with a _robot_ who couldn't possibly know what he was going through? When he first received his invitation to join in the third Smash tournament, Pit was _overjoyed _to participate and be amongst some of the humans he had watched on television or heard about through the Nintendo grapevine. Oh how his hopes and dreams had been shattered. The broken shards of childish ambition were razors that had inflicted deep cuts into his soul. And _soul _wounds were the deepest and darkest there were. It was so deep and festering that it felt like constantly crawling in his skin was a wound that would not heal.

No one would ever know of Pit's secret pain.

Sheik, though, was overjoyed that Cremia hadn't even considered him and punched Pit's arm in glee (that hurt beneath his skin, too). "Come on, let's get the hell out of here before something gross happens," he said and subsequently dragged Pit out of his private hellhole and into the night air.

Of course, Sheik's fear as well as Snake's hopes of something gross happening was entirely unfounded. In truth, Cremia was a lesbian who was hopelessly infatuated with her friend Anju who was getting married on a New Day (whenever that was). Oh sure she was _happy _for her lifelong friend – both of them as she was close with the groom-to-be Kafei as well – but she still just could squelch that pang of loneliness mixed with jealousy. If only she had a woman like Anju to share her life with and help raise Romani and or get her to a psychiatrist...

When she revealed her secret desires for breast companionship to Snake, Pit wasn't the only one with deep wound that crawled beneath his skin. Cremia only further cemented Snake's belief that Zelda was wrong the whole time and that all the women who rejected him really did do so because they were lesbians. In the wee morning hours he would commiserate with Pit over a bottle of Chateau Romani, but for now Pit was uneasily taking a stroll with Sheik outside.

"Hey," Pit began once they were near the barn, "do you think Romani was right? About the whole alien thing, I mean."

Busy tearing apart grass to find hearts, rupees, and other good shit (he learned this particular skill from Link back in the day when they believed themselves to be close), Sheik paused to give Pit a hard stare with only one red eye. The effect was kind of creepy to Pit and had Sheik been aware of how disconcerting it was to the angel, it's likely he wouldn't have done it. But as it was, Pit was given the hard, red eye simply because Sheik liked to look at him. The faux-ninja had never felt this way about Roy, who Pit sorely reminded him of, but there seemed to be a different, _unifying_ trait the two shared. Now if only Sheik knew what it was...

"No," he answered simply. "Everyone knows things like that don't exist."

The answer shocked and wounded Pit _to the core_ (it was deeper than the soul somehow, which was perpetually wounded anyway). Of all people he expected _Sheik_ to indulge his brief fear of aliens he picked up from spying over the human tube and to deny Pit of that fear as well as imply that strange things didn't exist?

Inconceivable.

"Then _you _don't exist," Pit murmured despite the gaping wound that throbbed within him.

Oblivious to Pit's incomprehensible pain, Sheik went back to uprooting potential Keaton hiding spots and responded in a surprisingly calm manner, "I don't."

Pain was something that had to simply be accepted in life, Sheik learned – one of the few lessons he did receive out of being Zelda's parasite that had overstayed its welcome. Snake had the hurt of aging and being alone, Pit had the hurt of not being accepted, and Sheik had the hurt of not exactly being real. His existential crisis did not go deep, though, and was simply a surface wound beneath the wrappings. After all, if _he_ wasn't real, then neither were any of his worries about the entire nature of his own being – and why worry about something that wasn't there? He and Zelda were opposites in the same body yet no one could ever say that they formed a balanced, complete human being, and even if it wasn't her fault, or it was both of their faults, Sheik blamed Zelda for it anyway and spent the entirety of his brief existence in maintaining that fierce opposition simply because it was the only thing he could do to separate himself in hopes that one day he really would be real – or maybe that one day he'd push from her so hard that they crossed the world to be apart from each other only to meet again from the back. Whatever. So if Sheik didn't exist then neither did angels or aliens, and in an odd sense the ninja found that rather comforting even if Pit hadn't.

Speaking of Pit, he found a red rupee at that moment and looked back up to give it to him...only to see that the angel boy in question was nowhere to be found. In his place, however, was White, which made Sheik scowl under his cowl as he immediately suspected foul play against Pit on the pikmin's part.

"God'damn root."

Sheik loved meat only because Zelda was a vegetarian and it pissed her off that her unruly counterpart would fill her body up with such vile substances when she wasn't there. Even better if it was rotten because he knew that soon after he wouldn't be the one to deal with the mess. After eating a couple platefuls of rotten meat ill-gained from Bowser as Sheik one day, Zelda dispelled the myth that Princesses had tidy (if any) bodily functions in front of all the Smashers. Wario thought it was hot, Ganondorf was surprisingly grossed out, Peach refused to associate with her for the entirety of the week, and Marth spent the rest of the month questioning everything he had ever known about women. Later Zelda issued strict instructions posted everywhere the system would let her that the rest of the players were under no circumstances to allow anything resembling meat into her body again when she was Sheik. Predictably it had the opposite effect and Sheik soon found a friend in Wolf.

So as it was, eating White in revenge for breaking his nose and somehow harming Pit would be what he perceived to be the only voluntary ingestion of vegetables that Sheik would ever experience. He should have found it suspicious when White simply let Zelda's other half pick him up without struggle. In fact, he hung limply between Sheik's fingers in a daze almost and smelled suspiciously like he had drank too much Chateau Romani but Sheik didn't pay any mind to these details. He just turned White away as he pulled down his cowl and bit off the pikmin's head.

The consistency of it was almost like a turnip and the bite was surprisingly clean with no blood in sight. Sheik was amused at how it was both squishy yet crunchy as he chewed so he took another bite, this time out of White's torso. Pikmin torso tasted different than pikmin head, though. What was that hard thing he found? A seed? It wasn't edible, Sheik figured, so he spit it out and put the remainder of the dismembered pikmin formerly known as White in his mouth – and subsequently into his stomach.

As far as vegetables went, eating White hadn't been that bad. It was almost _enjoyable_ even, but that was more out of the revenge factor than any real love of the taste. But regardless of why Sheik enjoyed eating him, it made him feel satiated and full. He almost went back into the house but the thought of Snake and Cremia doing gross shit promptly forced him to reconsider that thought. So instead he went inside the barn to chill with the cows.

"Moo," mooed the cows as cows usually do.

"Ninja," ninjaed the ninja as ninjas usually don't.

They had a good thing going on, Sheik and the cows did, until the aliens came along and ruined everything by beaming them up onto their spaceship.

Nonexistent fuckers.


End file.
